the beginning to be flown in private and to be
a test mule. I spent an entire summer flying it
(using model-airplane engines and propellers)
and slowly adding one system at a time, getting
the bugs worked out. It was never going to
be painted, and I could hack holes in it where
I needed to try different things as part of the
test-flight program. Armed with those results,
I spent the next two and a half years to use the
existing tooling to finish the show plane and
start flying it in public.

What was involved to design and build thelanding gear, and how long did it take?

Along with mold making, I was also interested
in machine work. I used the excuse of needing
landing gear to purchase a milling machine and a
lathe and teach myself about metal working. It
is great fun and not too bad to learn. During the
last two and a half years of building the show
plane, I spent about a year making the landing
gear. The wheels and brakes were developed by
Glennis Aircraft, and the retract mechanisms are
Tom Cook’s Mk 30 units, which work great.

The biggest development part was starting
with the correct spring that would give me the
proper travel and compression strength and
then designing the strut and gear around it. That
way, it would sit properly on the ground, rotate
correctly, and touch down properly on landing.

What materials did you use in the layupof your parts?

Since this whole process was new to me, I
made the prototype stronger than it really
needed to be. I laid it up with two layers of

6-ounce S fiberglass cloth, with 6-ounce
carbon cloth in areas of high stress. For the
show plane, I lightened that to two layers of

4-ounce S fiberglass cloth and 6-ounce carbon
cloth in areas of high stress. That change alone
lightened the show plane by 12 pounds from
the prototype’s weight. I also made plugs and

“I used the excuse of needIng landIng gear to
purchase a mIllIng machIne and a lathe and teach
myself about metal workIng. I spent about a year
makIng the landIng gear.”

molds for the four integrated fuel tanks and laid
those up with Kevlar cloth.

For the show plane, knowing the black plane
would get quite hot in the summer sun, I did
the layup with a high-temp resin from Resin
Services, which also supplies some of the
resins used by some NASCAR racing teams.

The resin I used is solid to 325°F and does
not require a post cure. It just cures at room
temperature, but it does take a couple of days
to get to its full hardness.

What are the SR- 71’s flight characteris-tics like?

It flies great. After so many years on a project,
you set a pretty high bar on how well you hope
it flies. Even with those high expectations, it
flies even better than I could have imagined. It
really tracks and flies like it’s on rails. Like the full
size, it’s not an aerobatic plane, and it’s built for
one thing: to go fast in a straight line. The model
does that beautifully. Like the full size, it does
not turn in a short corner, either. It takes about
a thousand feet to do a 180-degree turn with
the model when at flight speed, but then again,
the full-size bird would take two states to turn
around in, so it’s all relative.

For slower flight and in the landing circuit, it’s
really predictable and well behaved. The real bird
has some very complex things going on in the
outer wing panels, which have a very unique
droop in them. This helps with an equivalent of
washout that we are familiar with in our models. I
was so worried about getting these outer wings
correct in this droop, so I made them as separate
plugs/molds. If the plane did not behave correctly in flight, I could redo these outer wings to
address it. Turns out, I got the droop spot-on,
and the plane has all the good characteristics
you want: predictable low speed and high speed
that tracks dead-on straight, without a click of
trim’s difference between them.

Do you have any comments on beingsuccessful with a project that takes yearsto complete?

Something like this really just takes as long
as it takes. It is a hobby after all, and the build
process should be fun in its own right, without
pressure to get it done and to be at the field with
it before it’s finished. To stay motivated, I really
focused on just the next stage of the build and
did not dwell too much on being done with it, as
that part sorts itself out eventually. I hope that
others see a project like this and are encouraged
to tackle their own planes that they would like
to do, even if they are a bit off the beaten path.